The Convention Speech Willard Romney Should Give

TAMPA, Fla. — Once again, this time on the auspicious occasion of Willard Romney's coronation this evening as Emperor of the Wingnuts, I don my speechwriter's hat, which is a lovely fedora with a green feather in the band, to offer my help as crafter of winning narratives. I have been dropping in from time to time, during his grim and inexorable march to victory, to try and help the man confront head-on the very real problem that he talks like a bond trader trying to bullshit his way out of a DUI bust, and that he appears overall to have been fashioned out of the finest polymers science can devise. In many professions, these things would cause a career to crater but, in Republican politics, and backed with the kind of cash that could have bought off Cortez, they can get you the nomination of your dreams. There is still that nasty problem about how, the more people get to know him, the more they'd prefer to hurl themselves under a train rather than meet him again. This is where I come in. If that latter dynamic is going to prevail, and it has prevailed through two presidential campaigns and a governorship so far, then you might as well own it. Hell, you might as well embrace it. So, as the pit-crew oils all the hinges, sharpens the transmission and the steering, and shines up the Romneybot 2.0 for the biggest night of them all — and as we prepare to give you one last long night of coverage from here at the convention — I return one more time to offer my assistance....

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I'm Mitt Romney, bitches, and I'm all you got left.

Let me just stand here a moment so you can gaze in awe. Am I not a handsome man? Am I not just about the most handsome man you have ever seen? Is my hair not absolutely perfect? Is my family not the most perfect family you have ever seen? Am I not the greatest provider of Handsome genes there absolutely ever was? Is my DNA not made purely of spun gold? Do my cells not divide with the sound of angels weeping? Do I not gestate as the gods once did, mating from on high to the sound of thunderbolts? Do I not breed as a symphony does, one swelling movement after another? (And, speaking of swelling, yeah, that, too.) Am I not, in the very fundaments of my being, a temple of marble and crystal, where the very essence of myself flows like an azure river through banks of beaten silver? Am I not whence comes the New Jerusalem? Am I not what God Himself would have produced, if He'd only had been... well, me?

Am I not exactly the man you wish your worthless son-in-law back home was, popping his zits in the mirror of the tire-store men's room and drinking himself stupid a the Dew Drop Inn every night? Am I not the man you hoped to be, before the crops failed, and the plant closed, and the bank foreclosed? Am I not the man you women out there fantasize seeing across the Velveeta and Sprite on the dinner table? Am I not all the walking, talking, occasionally coherent manifestation of all the dreams you see receding into the deep purple distance? Am I not every one of your once golden wishes? Of course, I am. I am all of those things. I am that I am, and I contain multitudes. And you all goddamn well know it, because...

And I'm Mitt Romney, bitches, and I'm all you got left.

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I'm trying hard — I'm trying real hard, Ringo — to forget how disloyal all you bastards were to me over the past six years. I'm trying real hard to forget how many of you made fun of my magic underwear. I'm trying real hard to forget how many of you thought I was a baby-killing squish, and a friend of the gay man. I'm trying real hard to forget how many of you failed to respect the all the work it took to walk back every single political principle I had ever professed. I'm trying real hard to forget how many of you attached yourself to fly-by-night preachers, crazy pizza billionnaires, political Amway salesmen, outmatched goobers from Texas, retired busboys from the Council of Trent, and girls with faraway eyes rather than admit what was obvious all along. I'm trying real hard to forget how much you people hated the very idea of me, because...

I'm Mitt Romney, bitches, and I'm all you got left.

How'd you like how I strung 'em all out there for you this week, all your former favorites? They all gathered around to bathe in the light and the warmth of the essential Me. I ask Pawlenty to fetch, and he fetches. I ask Huckabee to roll over, and he rolls over. I ask Thune to fetch me my slippers, and he brings them to me in his mouth. I ask Portman to shut up, and he shuts up. (Good Christ, that man is dull. They should have him talk to people on 48-hour meth benders.) Up on the roof, the lot of you, it's time for me to campaign again. It doesn't matter any more what you think of me, because it never did, because...

I'm Mitt Romney, bitches, and I'm all you got left.

You People. Let me stand here for a moment and look out at You People. Hey there, Massachusetts! How you doing? You were a great little pit stop, and then you were a great little punchline. Yo, Wisconsin, what'd you think about our boy last night? The blue eyes. The catch in the throat. You grow 'em maudlin up there, I'll give you that. He keeps trying to get me to sign on to these economic plans of his, the ones that will render the country into Us and You People, and he doesn't know that I signed that deal with myself before he was born. He thinks there's something moral, something religious, about the notion that there are two kinds of people — Me, and The Help. He thinks there's some sort of arc to the moral universe that bends slowly toward the banks in the Caymans. I know better. God helps those who help themselves to everything they can grab. I'm going to have to sit the boy down one day and explain it all to him but, for now, all he really needs to know is who pulls the strings here, and what the way of the world is, because...

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I'm Mitt Romney, bitches, and I'm all you got left.

Okay, okay. American Dream. Splendor. I believe in this country. You did Build It. (Then, I bought it, loaded it down with debt, sent the jobs to Malaysia, sold off the pieces, raided the pensions, and left you holding the bag, but you Did Build the bag, so good for you. It's the black Jag. Park it around the back, willya?) My wife, Ann. Entrepreneurship. Innovation. Obamacare. Bad, bad Obamacare. Teleprompters. Golf vacations. Gutting welfare reform. Stealing $700 billion from Medicare. I love Medicare. (Am I done yet? Jesus, when will that red light go on?) Mount Rushmore. Immigrant dreams. Grandpa, el gringo en Mexico. My Dad. Loved my Dad. (He was such a sucker about those tax returns, though. WHERE THE HELL'S THE DAMN RED LIGHT?) Free trade. Fair trade. Kick the Chinamen in the balls. Lead from the front. Lead from THE FRONT. LEAD FROM THE FRONT! (Jesus, I never have spoken this long to Those People before in my life. Please, God, get me out of this.) You Did Build It, okay? You fking well... Did... Build... it. Okay, You People? You people, okay? You are the salt of the earth, the wind beneath my wings. I believe your children are the future, teach them well and let them lead the way. (AM I DONE YET? Can't I send one of these people out to get me a lemonade? You down there, fat guy from Ohio, you look like you know the way to the concession stand. Oh, thank Christ, the red light is on.)

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